Ghost Box Shack Hack

Hi! I'm trying to find out if anyone has any idea whether the newer make of the Radio Shack 12-470 can be hacked to continuously scan. This one is the black one that's made to look like an ipod. Apparently, when I ordered it online, even though the picture showed the older model, they decided to send me the new one. Does anyone know how to fix this model?

Hi! I'm trying to find out if anyone has any idea whether the newer make of the Radio Shack 12-470 can be hacked to continuously scan. This one is the black one that's made to look like an ipod. Apparently, when I ordered it online, even though the picture showed the older model, they decided to send me the new one. Does anyone know how to fix this model?

Hey GadgetGirl...

I don't believe that one can be hacked... but if you go to www.ufogeek.com, he has a lot of articles on how to do the shack hack... Maybe he has an article on how to hack the newer model or if it can even be done...

Christopher

PB&J Paranormal proudly supports the St. Baldrick's Foundation for childhood cancer research so that all children diagnosed with cancer will have a better chance for a cure.

I don't believe that one can be hacked... but if you go to www.ufogeek.com, he has a lot of articles on how to do the shack hack... Maybe he has an article on how to hack the newer model or if it can even be done...

Christopher

No luck. He hasn't figured it out yet, so I guess it will be a while....

Don't beat yourself up trying to figure out how to make an inferior piece of Ghost Hunting equipment by trying to hack up an inferior product from Radio Shack. If I were you, I would save my money and purchase the real thing from Paranormal Systems Inc., you will be happy you did as it was designed for the job, not hacked to save a little money. I purchased one of the Mini Box's from them and have been really taken by the results. You can hook it directly into your laptop and the system has a filtering that you wont believe. Good quality data comes from good quality equipment, if you are looking for a quality video cam you don't go to Radio Shack and hack up a piece of equipment and try to get good results. I don't know how all of this got started, hacking things up that is, but as a scientist I have always looked for the best equipment or waited until I could afford it. That way my peers would not torment me using my own data against me.

Interests:Serious Research and separating the truth from the hype in the paranormal field today.

Posted 10 May 2008 - 11:17 AM

And the reason to want to randomly scan across the broadcast bands is ...????

This whole concept of boxes that create random sounds / snippets of voice / noise ends in just that, random sounds. Then you listen to it and when one of these random patterns either comes out as a word or series of words that seems to make some sense because of audio paraedolia some say the spirits are talking to them???

A little logic here please! Let's go with it for a minute and assume there are in fact spirits and they do want to give a message. Why would they do it in such a convoluted manner? I mean they would ( A ) have to know what station was transmitting the particular phoneme they needed to create the portion of the word they intended to speak. ( B ) Have to manipulate the tuning to that station while in someway muting out all the other sounds that would come across as the tuner passed by other stations. ( C ) Have to do this at a rate that assembled these words in a manner that it flowed seemlessly as speech. And as if that wasn't bad enough though ( D ) The spirit would have know what all of this BEFORE THE ACTUAL SIGNAL WAS TRANSMITTED....

So I ask why ??? If this were even possible and such a talented spirit existed and wanted to send a message, why wouldn't it simply manipulate a standard recorder or amplifier to create its own words??? (That may in fact happen, they're called EVPs. ) Keep in mind though that for any manipulation of a radio transmission at a rate capable of seemlessly creating words it would also be possible to create sound from the same energy at a rate sufficient to create speech. Thus any audio amplifier could, assuming there is a spirit manipulating a field, be capable under those conditions of creating intelligent speech clearly from nothing. No white noise, no other audio snippets, and certainly no paraedolia boxes.

So your trying to say that The Box does Not work! If that is true why bother even hacking a product from Radio Shack. Do you own one and do you use it on a regular bases?, or do you just lack first hand experience in the use of this particular piece of equipment. I have on the other hand used this piece of equipment on many investigations and I can tell you that I don't know what is really going on with it. You can logically discuss the merritt's of the box or the flaws of using such a device. I make no clams from using this device and am currently running my own experiments with the system. I half to admit though some of the things that I have recorded are quite amazing. I would suggest using the box before you BAD_WORD it. You might be surprised with your findings.

Interests:Serious Research and separating the truth from the hype in the paranormal field today.

Posted 11 May 2008 - 02:57 PM

I would suggest before making such claims for something of this nature you understand EXACTLY what is happening and why it does what it does.

I have not bothered with hacking the Radio Shack product but the end result is very similar to Frank's Box, so I would expect what applies to one applies to the other. And Frank's Box I have more than used, I have put it through a series of tests in a lab utilizing thousands of dollars worth of equipment. So when I say it is simply audio matrixing, I DO have basis to support my statements.

The box I used was tested and modifified in various ways to even allow me to determine what station was being sampled at any given instant. The determination was made by measuring the instantaneous "tuning voltage" being applied to the AM radio chip which picked up the siganls. This data was saved using a highspeed data logger which allowed me to later determine what station was tuned in at that instant. The output was also recorded and time sampled to compare what program was being broadcast by the station in question at that instant. One snippet sounded a lot like Rush Limbaugh. When I checked the frequency and found the station on that frequency, I checked their program information. Wnder of wonders, the Rush Limbaugh show was on-air..... Pretty conclusive in my book who THAT spirit was. At least that part of the "message" .

I applaud your efforts to resolve what the hack is doing, please continue since I don't have the facilities to test EVERY idea that comes along. Maybe somewhere someone does have something that will allow such contact to be made. But the audio paraedolia boxes are not the answer. We need a fresh approach. This avenue of using matrixing from radios is a dead end .

O, believe me, I make no clam's about the box, I am just testing the thing but I have been amazed with the results. I agree that audio matrixing is an issue when using the box. That being said, I would suggest that you must be in range of at least a good number of AM stations for that particular case to exists. I have in the past used the Box in a rural areas where there was no clear AM radio signals available, just a good deal of static, more like what is generated with a white noise generator. Now if what you are saying is true I should not have been able to collect any audio through it as there were no random words available for this alleged entity to draw upon when I was asking questions, similar to the ones I ask when collecting evp's on a standard audio recorder.
I was able to carry on a short conversation, in the form of questions/ answers and was gathering information that only the builder of the home would have known. Now if we actually had a good number of radio stations available for this particular experiment which we did not, and a good bit of random audio coming from the AM bands, which we also did not have, we still statistically would have not picked up answers that would have been correct for questions about the home. What we collected were good Class A EVP's through the box that we were unable to collect using a standard audio recorder.
Like I said I am making no clams about talking to the the dead using this box as a I am about a skeptical as they come, but I have to admit that the findings are interesting.

There's been plenty of articles, blogs, and forum entries in regards to "spirit communication boxes" , and I am not quite sure why paranormal investigators are still relying on these devices on investigations.

Every box out there now scans existing radio frequencies. The investigator running the experiment asks questions of the spirits, and then they listen to the box to see what comes out of it. If it remotely sounds like a reply to the question asked, it's deemed spirit communication.

Someone once said if you sit a chimpanzee at a typewriter long enough, it will type out Shakespeare. This same idea goes for these boxes.

We are ingrained to hear and see familiar objects in random patterns. When these spirit boxes are used, we are introducing fragments of real human speech, spoken by very living individuals, into the investigation. To assume that there is a spirit there placing itself in the machine and choosing which snippets will come out to form the message it wants to relay is ludicrous. I am not saying that some very astounding coincidences haven't come from sessions with these boxes, but I am willing to put my entire 401k savings on the line to say that what is going on is nothing more than a case of audio paradolia.

From the website for The Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (ASSAP):

"Speech is understood by humans, completely unconsciously, using phonemes. People use these basic building blocks to understand speech. We can identify phonemes at a rate 20 per second but can only follow similar non-speech sounds at a rate of around 1 per second. Clearly the phonemes are built into our memory for quick recognition (as are whole words). Interestingly, it is not simply a question of identifying each phoneme and constructing words. Phoneme sounds can be modified by the phoneme before and after them. They are also frequently slurred together. So the system of recognizing speech (which also has to work for different accents) has to be very flexible. The cost of this flexibility is that it sometimes makes errors."

So not only are our brains wired to hear familiar bits and pieces of words in order to help us determine speech, those who use these boxes are introducing real-time speech into the mix. If we also take into consideration the "cocktail party effect", the phenomena where people can hear and distinguish familiar words like their names or other recognizable phrases through the din of a loud or busy environment, it's not hard to see that even though using these frquency scanner might have been a great idea at some point in time, it can easily and readily be explained, and therefore not entered into the ring as a viable device for communication with the dead, or spirits, or anyone else for that matter.

Blessings,

DaveOpen Mind Paranormal Research

"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation." Herbert Spencer

Interests:Serious Research and separating the truth from the hype in the paranormal field today.

Posted 14 May 2008 - 07:28 PM

You are not the first to claim answers to questions. But what constitutes an answer? If one is going to seriously use that approach the most important criterea to remember is the answers complexity is directly related to reliability. By that if I ask a question that requires a yse-no answer, the probability is very good that I will receive a sequence of phonemes that will allow one of those two interpretations. All others by default will be subconciously ignored, thus giving a hig likelyhood of "success".

However if I ask a more complex question, one that requires multiple words to reply that improves the credibility in two ways. first, the probability of a longer series of phonemes to assemble correctly is diminished unless some form of control (intelligence) is behind it. Secondly, the presence of random improper phonemes also goes up. This means that if these are present the overall credibility decreases. To sum up, a response should be both free of random garbage, and all valid phonemes should be present. In other words, a multi phrased clear voice is heard.

Under these conditions, noise should be at a minimum and the longer the phrase the better. Your only other concern then becomes outside RF signals being detected. If your equipment is properly shielded this possibility can be negated.

Interests:Science, history, museums, and the technical aspects of investigating the paranormal.

Posted 22 February 2010 - 09:15 AM

Under these conditions, noise should be at a minimum and the longer the phrase the better. Your only other concern then becomes outside RF signals being detected. If your equipment is properly shielded this possibility can be negated.

So if I place my "shack hack" in a Faraday cage and still record responses would you count that as evidence of the paranormal? That is precisely what I plan to do to rule out snippets of "radio voices" recorded from the box. As a paranormal investigator, I feel that using the laws of science to verify "any" claims is a must. I am curious though CaveRat, would you recommend using some copper mesh obtained from a hobby store to build my Faraday cage, and if so how can I shield an input device from interference. Is it possible to make a signal refraction area that is open to cables or wires and still provide shielding from am/fm bands?

Under these conditions, noise should be at a minimum and the longer the phrase the better. Your only other concern then becomes outside RF signals being detected. If your equipment is properly shielded this possibility can be negated.

So if I place my "shack hack" in a Faraday cage and still record responses would you count that as evidence of the paranormal? That is precisely what I plan to do to rule out snippets of "radio voices" recorded from the box. As a paranormal investigator, I feel that using the laws of science to verify "any" claims is a must. I am curious though CaveRat, would you recommend using some copper mesh obtained from a hobby store to build my Faraday cage, and if so how can I shield an input device from interference. Is it possible to make a signal refraction area that is open to cables or wires and still provide shielding from am/fm bands?

Faraday Cages is someting I am very familiar with. My personal favorite faraday cage is, a cardboard box covered with layers of aluminum foil,(no gaps or holes in foil). If you can ground the foil that is even better. If you get any RF response, I know (3) Physics Professors would would love to meet with you. Keep in mind, if you are using audio recording equipment in the box, the faraday cage will not stop acoustically (pressure wave) transmitted sounds.

Interests:Serious Research and separating the truth from the hype in the paranormal field today.

Posted 22 February 2010 - 05:59 PM

Robot is correct, a solid sheet is required to properly construct a Faraday cage. If one uses a mesh, each "block" in the mesh can allow admission of RF based on the wavelength of the signal and its relation to the spacing of the mesh.

You also need a single point ground method to prevent any radiation back through any conductors you may run into the cage. And all conductors also need to be properly bypassed to ground to prevent re-radiation of RF that could ride in on them.

I addressed the issue in your aothe rpost,, but to touch on it here, if you do get something, you will also be required to demonstrate it is not an artifact from the equipment you placed inside the cage. Thus low quality voice recorders and related cheap radios, etc. are out. (aliasing and intermodulation distortion come to mind.) You will be required to provide complete specs on whatever equipment was placed inside the cage so that validation can be done to confirm these artifacts do not exist.

My suggestion is do the experiment, and be able to properly document both your equipment and your results.